Firsts
by rosesinjanuary
Summary: Grissom and Sara's first...everything. GSR.
1. First Steps

At some point, when her crying had died to shaky breathing and some sniffling, her stomach growled, the noise embarrassingly loud in the silence.

"When did you last eat?" Grissom asked gently.

She took a deep breath, managed to control the hitch in her voice. "Late last night...I think."

"Go wash your face and blow your nose," he said, letting go of her hand and getting to his feet. "If you'll let me rummage through your kitchen, I'll fix you something." When she just stared up at him blankly, he said firmly, "You have to eat, Sara."

Numbly, she nodded and headed for her bathroom. Halfway to the door, she turned. "You don't have to take care of me."

He'd moved to the kitchen, and his back was to her as he peered into the cupboards, but she still heard him quietly reply, "Yes, I do."

* * *

She blew her nose, splashed cold water on her face, and yanked the elastic out of her hair and brushed it out, less for vanity's sake than for the hope that if she tilted her head the right way, it would hide her face.

If he couldn't see her swollen eyes and red nose, maybe he'd forget the whole thing had happened.

Yeah, right. And that was a pig flying by the bathroom window.

* * *

As she slumped in one of the stools at her breakfast bar, elbows resting on the counter, she willed herself to acknowledge the surreal quality of the situation. Grissom was standing in her kitchen, grating a block of cheese she was pretty sure was at least a couple days past its expiration date.

Grissom. Kitchen. Cheese.

She gave up after a few minutes. She was too drained to care.

"You don't have to take care of me," she repeated dully.

He'd begun cracking eggs into a bowl. "Do you remember why I asked you to come to Vegas?" he asked calmly.

Seven years, she thought, forgetting to hide her face as she looked up in confusion. Seven years, and she was still thrown by his conversational left turns. "I think you said something about Internal Affairs being incompetent and biased, and needing someone you...trusted." She forced the last word through a slight catch in her throat.

Grissom nodded, dumping the eggshells into the trash. "What else?"

Too tired to argue, Sara picked through her sluggish memory. "You said you needed a friend." She'd been so happy, she remembered, watching him get out a whisk from a drawer she hadn't opened in about two months. Worried for him, and sad about the circumstances, but so happy that he'd seen her as both a friend and someone he could trust, professionally.

"Yes." He was whisking the eggs together. "I needed a friend. I needed _you_. And you came, and you stayed, because I asked you to. We were good friends, once. And maybe if I'd remembered that instead of letting...a lot of things get in the way, I would have wondered why domestic violence cases were your triggers. Why you got so upset about them. Maybe I would have...noticed more."

Sara was mildly hypnotized by the way he stirred the eggs in the frying pan, added cheese, stirred some more. "It's not your job to fix me, you know," she said absently.

Grissom grabbed the bread she hadn't realized was there out of the toaster, scooped scrambled eggs onto two plates, and set one in front of her. "As your boss, it's my job to know what cases are hard for you and factor that into your assignments." He chewed a bite of toast and egg. "As your friend, it's my job to know when you're upset and why. I think...with you...I've done very badly at both jobs."

She took a bite of cheesy egg.

They actually tasted pretty good.

"It wasn't all your fault," she acknowledged quietly, looking him in the eye for the first time that day. They held one another's gaze silently for a minute, and then she jerked her head towards the second stool. "You can sit, if you want."

He sat.

Eventually, she waved a forkful of egg at him. "Good," she managed, with her mouth full. She swallowed. "I wouldn't have pegged you for the cheesy eggs type."

He smiled slightly. "My mother used to make them for me, when I was sick or had a bad day. Comfort food," he explained. "That, and there's not much in your fridge."

Sara nodded, poking at the eggs with her fork. "She died last year, didn't she?" she asked after a moment. "Your mom."

"Yes." He was studying the bite marks he'd left in his toast. The smile had gone.

She was studying him, out of the corner of her eye. "Did I tell you I was sorry, or was I too busy being mad?"

The corner of his mouth turned back up. "You did offer your condolences. Very nicely and sincerely, in fact."

"Good."

* * *

They ate quietly. When he'd finished, Grissom took his plate to her sink. "Kaye Shelton," he said suddenly, looking at her over his shoulder.

"That's an old one." When he simply looked at her, she sighed. "We're all trained to analyze those types of x-rays, Grissom." He kept looking at her.

She sighed again. "I hate those things. My mom used to freak out if they made her leave me in the waiting room, or with a nurse, so they'd let me sit with her while they went over the x-rays. I knew the names of all the bones in the face by the time I was eight. Her films looked a lot like Kaye Shelton's."

He finished rinsing his plate and turned back to her, drying his hands slowly on a dish towel, hesitating. "And yours?" he asked finally.

She ate the last of her toast and carried her plate to the sink. Some of her control was back, along with some of her ability to distance herself from it, to stay calm, detached. "Not as bad. I learned to stay out of the way young." She leaned her hip against the counter, facing him, crossing her arms over her chest. "I have a couple of fingers that healed a little crooked, because I hated wearing the casts. My collarbone, too, but you can't see it. There's a little bump." There were others she didn't mention. Other broken bones that had healed perfectly, other scars. Some that didn't show up on skin or x-rays, that only she could see.

Almost involuntarily, it seemed, he reached out as if to feel the badly healed bone for himself. Surprised, she flinched.

Immediately, he pulled his hand away. "I'm sorry," he said, stepping back, giving her space.

Too careful with her, she realized. Like everyone who found out about her family.

She shook her head. "It's not that." He didn't look like he believed her. "You just startled me, is all." She reached out. "Give me your hand."

When he hesitated, her heart clenched a little. "Please don't treat me like I'm broken," she said quietly.

Something shifted in his expression, and he let her take his hand and place his fingers over the small flaw in her collarbone.

Slowly, gently, he ran his thumb back and forth over the spot.

"You're not broken, Sara." There was a note in his voice she'd never heard before. "You've never been broken."

* * *

For a long time after he left, she could still feel the touch of his fingers on her skin.

FIN


	2. First Date

_If the thunder rolls for a while  
And the sky is clouded, bringing rain,  
Then you will stay beside me._

Even when no thunder sounds  
And no rain falls, if you but ask me,  
Then I will stay beside you.

--Japanese dialogue poem

* * *

It _was_ a Sunday, actually. She and Ecklie just didn't have the same definition of 'intimate.'

* * *

"Have dinner with me tonight."

She blinked, and realized her mouth was hanging open. It had been a long time since she'd slept, and she was half-convinced she'd hallucinated the question. "Dinner," she said slowly.

Grissom nodded, his hand on his car door. His expression was perfectly calm, as though asking her to dinner while standing in the parking lot were a completely normal course of events. "We're off tonight. The doctors said that they would prefer to keep Nick's visitors to family only until tomorrow." He shrugged. "I thought it would be fun."

Sara stared at him. "Fun." She realized that repeating what he said was probably not the most intelligent-sounding response, but her sluggish brain was having trouble processing the situation.

Grissom. Was asking her to dinner. Voluntarily.

He smiled. "Go home," he told her. "Sleep. I'll pick you up at eight. It's late for dinner, but this place is best after dark."

By the time she'd recovered her voice, he was already in the car. "Where are we going?"

The window rolled down, and he stuck his head out. "It's a surprise," he said.

The world had clearly tilted on its axis. She turned to walk to her own car, fairly certain she'd wake up in a few minutes and realize this was a dream.

"Oh, and Sara?" She looked back over her shoulder. "Dress warmly."

Dream. Had to be.

"As in, processing a crime scene warmly."

* * *

"Grissom?"

She sounded wary. "Yes?"

"We aren't really going to a crime scene, are we?"

He smiled. "Not exactly."

Silence for a moment.

"The body farm?" Her voice was half incredulous, half intrigued.

He laughed at that one. "No. Be patient."

She muttered something to herself, the gist of which suggested that anyone willing to even get in a car with him deserved a gold medal for patience right at the start.

"Trust me," he told her. "It will be worth it." They drove quietly for a few minutes. "Can you close your eyes? I'll tell you when to open them."

He was grateful he had to keep his eyes on the road; even so, the edge of her glare was frightening.

* * *

The look on her face had been worth it.

He'd helped her out of the car, tilted her face up to the sky, and watched as her eyes opened wide.

This far out of the city, with none of the lights they used for processing scenes, none of the noise and distraction of cars and uniforms trekking around…the stars were all that you noticed.

"I forget, sometimes, what it looks like without all the neon," she said softly, simply staring. "Even when we're working a scene out here, it's easy to just…not look up." Suddenly she looked around sharply. "Speaking of working a scene…"

He shook his head as he spread a blanket over the hood of the car. "Not quite. The edge of the fire damage is a few miles east of here." He hauled himself up onto the Denali with what he hoped was a minimum of awkwardness, and held out a hand to her. "But being out here then was what gave me the idea."

Sara's eyes flicked from his hand, to his face, and back to his hand. Finally, she pulled herself up onto the blanket beside him. He was nervous, she realized. Outwardly, he appeared as composed as always. But as she studied him, she noticed one of his few tells – the tapping of his little finger against his knee. He was nervous, and so, she discovered, was she.

_Nothing to be nervous about,_ she told herself firmly. She took a deep breath of the cold night air, and let it out.

"I was told there would be dinner," she said teasingly, hoping to put them both at ease.

Grissom almost imperceptibly let out a breath of his own, and the moment of tension faded. "There is," he said, pulling a thermos out of a bag next to him. "Vegetable soup," he announced, handing it to her and pulling out several more, "something involving butternut squash, tomato, coffee, and hot chocolate."

She stared at him for a minute, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. Not a chicken noodle or Italian wedding in the bunch.

He paused as he unscrewed the lid of the coffee. "What?" he asked, looking at her quizzically.

Sara let the smile have the right of way. "Nothing," she said quietly, beginning to open the soup. "Any cups in there?"

They ate in companionable near-silence, swapping thermoses back and forth, occasionally pointing out stars and constellations as they spotted them. They'd packed away most of the soup and were idly sipping at the hot chocolate when Grissom grabbed her hand. "Look," he said, gesturing with his other hand, nearly dropping his cup. "Shooting star."

Her fingers tightened on his as she followed his pointing and saw the bright flash. "Beautiful," she murmured.

"Very," she heard him say. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that he was looking not at the sky, but at her profile. She managed to keep her face still, but she couldn't stop the flush that spread over her cheeks. She could only hope the darkness hid it.

"Sara," he said after a moment. "Why are you still here?"

She took her time answering. She had a million quick responses, everything from professional to flippant, but they wouldn't work here. Slowly, she put into words something she'd known on some level since the first week she'd known him, the first time they'd had coffee together.

"Because if this were it…If everything ended here, and all we'd had were the past seven years and this night, right here. If this were all there would ever be for us," Sara squeezed his hand gently, almost afraid he'd dissolve if she held on too tight, "this would still be the best relationship I've ever had."

He was quiet for a minute. "I'm miserable at relationships."

Sara shrugged. "Me too."

"I'm a workaholic."

"So am I."

"I race cockroaches for fun."

"I read cold case files. We all need a hobby."

"I hate the music you listen to."

"Opera makes my eye twitch."

"I love steak."

"Just don't make me eat it or touch it."

"We can't tell anyone at the lab."

"So? It's none of their business anyway."

"I'm fifteen years older than you, and I'll die much sooner."

That one gave her pause. Death. Thinking ahead to death meant forever. Meant he really was serious about all this. Meant he'd finally figured out what to do about 'this'. A tiny, happy shiver ran down her spine. "I could try to cross a street tomorrow and get hit by a car. We know there aren't any certainties, Gris."

She could still feel his eyes on her, and she finally turned to look at him. One side of his mouth was lifting, ever so slightly, in what she'd learned over the years to interpret as a smile. He nodded, once, as if to say, "All right, then," and squeezed her hand equally gently. Then he went back to studying the sky.

But he didn't let go of her hand.

Sara smiled quietly to herself and looked back up at the stars. She let the moment play itself out, then said, "This whole thing, by the way? Stars, picnic, hot chocolate? Very nice."

Grissom smiled a little more. "It was a risk," he admitted. "The last unconventional date I tried met with a less than enthusiastic response. I've stuck with the fairly traditional since then."

Repressing a laugh, she glanced over at him. "Really." She tried to imagine Grissom pulling off a traditional dinner-in-a-nice-restaurant date and had to swallow another laugh. "What did you do?"

Even he was laughing a bit now. "A viewing of _The Wizard of Oz_ on mute with Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_ over it." He looked at her worriedly when she suddenly stopped laughing.

Her eyebrows were raised. "Really?" she said again.

Grissom thought he heard something like interest in her voice, but he was afraid it was more like incredulity. Or possibly horror.

"Does that actually work?" she continued. "I've always wanted to try it."

Blinking in surprise, he stared at her. He knew Sara Sidle well enough to tell when she was being sarcastic, polite, or distant.

This was not one of those times.

It was one of the few instances in his life Gilbert Grissom acted without thinking. Her cheek was warm against his cold fingers. Her lips were cold, but warmed quickly once they touched his. And she leaned into him with something that sounded so much like a happy sigh he had to believe that's what it was.

Because she was right. Whether it ended in the next thirty seconds or the next thirty years or never, whether it was preceded or followed by two affairs or twenty, whether they fought once a day or once a month…

…it would still always be the best relationship he'd ever had.


	3. First

"'Love' has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get—only with what you are expecting to give—which is everything." –Katherine Hepburn

* * *

"Would you like to have breakfast when we're finished here?" Grissom had asked. He kept his voice low, even though the only cop left to guard the scene was outside the heavy wooden door. No point in taking chances.

Well, any more than they already were.

Sara studied the bottle she was photographing, playing for time. Breakfast. They'd had four months of strange, enjoyable, fun, torturous breakfasts…or occasionally dinner, or lunch. Breakfast meant one of two things: conversation and meaningful eye contact at a diner off the beaten track, where they didn't have much of a chance of being caught, or take out, conversation, and meaningful eye contact at some out of the way picnic spot. This was a slight improvement over the diner, because it meant that breakfast occasionally included…well…

Possibly she was overanalyzing. Okay, she was _definitely_ overanalyzing. But she'd never spent so much time at the kissing stage of a relationship in her life. She'd never met a guy who _wanted_ to spend so much time there. Grissom, however, seemed content to go at her pace, and she took her time, stealing pecks between sips of coffee, sharing good-bye kisses against the car before they drove home, losing themselves in each other in the shade of a tree one particularly sweltering morning…and generally getting to know one another as intimately as two people can who do all of their dating in extremely exposed, public places. Places where they always remain fully clothed and never allow their hands to stray anywhere…well, _anywhere_.

Fine. As much as she was loving every single hard-won second of it, it was driving her crazy.

"You're off tonight, right?"

He nodded.

"Me too. Come over." _To my nice, quiet,_ private _apartment,_ she thought. " I'll make dinner."

Grissom raised an eyebrow at her. She swallowed a smile. "Don't look so surprised. As long as I stick to pasta and vegetables, we shouldn't go hungry."

He held her eyes for a moment. Then, silently, briefly, he nodded, and they went back to processing the scene.

* * *

She changed her sheets and thought about men. And seduction.

Sara liked to be in charge. She liked to make the first move, have the guy follow her lead. Sara had never wanted to be one of those women…totally strong and independent until the "right" man came along, when all of a sudden they wanted to be tiny and fragile and swept off their feet.

She would never be tiny, and she was fairly certain that no man who'd ever seen her dismantling a jeep would find her fragile. She liked herself the way she was, standing firmly on feet she'd never let anyone try to sweep her off of. She was the seducer. And she'd found, generally, that men didn't really mind being seduced.

Her strategies were different than other women's. That didn't mean that she didn't have any – or that they didn't work.

She took a bath, shaving and scrubbing and polishing. Female rituals anyone at the lab would have been surprised to see her indulging in. She stood in front of the mirror in her bathrobe, fussing with brushes and tubes, and when she was done she looked…exactly the way she usually looked. A tiny bit more polished, maybe. Which, fortunately, was just want she wanted.

Her favorite jeans, the ones that also happened to make her legs look longer than ever. A black tank top that dipped a hair lower and had thinner straps than the ones she wore to work, which she covered with an old purple cardigan worn into comfortable softness. It had an (un)fortunate tendency to slip off her shoulder if she didn't pay attention. She left her feet bare and her hair curly.

When she opened the door, Grissom felt like he'd been punched in the solar plexus.

He couldn't put a finger on anything specific that was different about her – she was just…Sara. _My Sara,_ he found himself thinking possessively, as something very primal and testosterone-based that he hadn't felt in a while kicked in. He struggled to control it. But then she pulled him into a kiss just a fraction deeper than anything they'd shared before, and he momentarily lost track of which way was up.

Gil Grissom did not trust attraction, in any form. Physical attraction was slippery, and easy, and could often be mistaken for something it wasn't. And it was never enough. No matter how much of it there was, it was never enough. Mental attraction was better; more solid, more to build on. But still not enough. There was always something missing.

Whatever it was, Sara had it. Whatever it was, when he was with her, he wanted to give in to everything else. To the speed at which her mind worked, the way she could catch up with him in the middle of a thought process, the fact that she could do math in her head faster than he could do it on paper, the endless legs he caught himself imagining wrapped around his waist, and the smooth, soft skin he wanted to feel against his. And most of all, to her wicked, knowing smile and the softness in her eyes.

For just a minute, he nearly let go. And then he pulled back. It was too easy, being with her. Too easy to lose control, for one of them to get hurt. Better to keep it slow, steady…safe.

As they separated, Sara cocked her head to one side, looking at him in that way she had that left him feeling uncomfortably exposed. Then she smiled and kissed him once more, lightly. "C'mon," she said. "Dinner's almost ready."

* * *

Sara put her empty plate on the coffee table next to Grissom's and propped her feet up on the edge. As she did, Grissom's hand snaked out and caught her ankle. "What's this?" he asked, pushing up the leg of her jeans.

She laughed. "What does it look like? It's a tattoo. I got it when I solved my second case."

He lifted his eyebrows, his thumb rubbing lightly over the sunburst design. "_Second_ case?"

The feel of his hand on her skin had her shivering. She was _almost_ positive he wasn't doing it on purpose. "I got tattoos for the first three."

Grissom slid his hand a little further up her leg…and stopped. Just resting there. Warm, heavy, intimate, but not going any further. Still safe. He studied the blue ink of the tattoo on her white skin. "And where," he wondered, his curiosity getting the best of him, "are the other two?"

Sara smiled. "One's on my back." She leaned in, brushed her lips over his. _Wanna see?_ she almost asked, but the look in his eye stopped her.

Hesitation. The barest, tiniest hint of hesitation.

One kiss – the right kind of kiss – would push past it, and she could have her hands all over him, like she'd wanted to since god-knows-when. But instead she found herself getting…tired. Just tired of wondering if he really wanted _his_ hands all over _her_, of trying to interpret those meaningful looks and loaded sentences.

It must have flickered across her face, because his forehead creased suddenly. "What's wrong?" he asked.

Sara managed a smile and kissed his cheek. "Nothing," she said quietly. "I'm just going to rinse the dishes." She started to gather up the plates.

"Let me help."

She was already heading to the kitchen, and she tossed another smile over her shoulder. "No, stay where you are. I'm just going to rinse them off." Dumping the plates in the sink, she pushed up her sleeves and grabbed a clip from the counter to anchor her hair up on her head, out of the way. _Silly_, she told herself.

Somehow, she'd expected it to all go according to plan – _her_ plan. Then again, since when had Grissom ever fallen in line with any of her plans? From the beginning, she'd known it wasn't going to be like it was with other men. She hadn't wanted it to be.

Sitting on the couch, Grissom traced the exposed line of her neck with his eyes. He'd been looking at her neck – when he could – for a long time, he thought idly. How many years? Four, six, seven…seven years…When he looked at her, he could still see a girl, twenty-six, passionate, eager, with a steadiness and a quietness her contemporaries lacked. Looking across at him with a wicked smile and soft eyes and just a glimmer of unprofessional interest. Asking questions so long he would have thought she was just trying to keep talking to him, if the questions hadn't all been so relevant. His fingers itching to touch the long, smooth curve of her neck revealed by her ponytail as she bent over the desk to scribble her email address on a scrap of paper.

Seven years later, his fingers still itched whenever she put her hair up.

One touch would be simple. Stopping after one touch would be anything but. _We're happy the way we are_, he reminded himself. _Finally. There's no point in rushing into anything._

_It could go so wrong_, he thought. But somehow he was standing behind her, and his finger reached out to skim down her neck. _So incredibly wrong._

Her skin was softer than he'd imagined, and smelled deliciously of…something. Her. Just her.

And he was lost.

The touch made her start, and she glanced over her shoulder. He was staring at her so intently her breath caught in her throat.

"I've wanted to do that since the first day we met," he said softly, the words slipping out seemingly without his permission. His fingers were gentle and ever-so-slightly rough along her face. "Sara…" He brushed his thumb over her bottom lip. "You are so very beautiful."

Sara turned toward him, gripping the edge of the sink with one hand. Something solid and steady to hold on to, because the feet she was so good at standing firmly on were attached to knees that were suddenly very weak.

She hated and detested being weak.

He slid his hands along her shoulders, down her arms, and found her fingers tightly clamped onto the counter. He tugged, lightly. "Why are you holding on to the counter for dear life?"

Swallowing hard, she focused on the feel of his hand on her wrist. "Because." She swallowed again, tried to pull herself together. "Long day…I'm tired. Afraid I'll fall asleep standing up and fall over." She tried a smile. He was _not_ going to have this his way, like everything else. _Not._

He pulled on her wrist again. "You don't trust me to catch you?" It was one of those unexpectedly sweet things he would just say, as though he said them all the time and it shouldn't startle her or make her heart melt and her breathing stutter. He was gently prying her fingers off the sink, guiding her arms around his neck.

His sudden confidence would have irritated her nearly as much as his prior hesitation…if she hadn't felt the tremble of his hand on her wrist. Suddenly, it wasn't about control or confidence or weakness, and it didn't matter than her knees would barely hold her, because Grissom had his arms tight around her and she was almost positive he wouldn't let her fall.

"Don't –" she gasped suddenly when they parted for air, and then caught herself. Taking a long, shuddering breath, Grissom pulled back ever so slightly. "Whatever you want, Sara – "

" …stop," she finished. "Please," she fought against the quiver in her voice, "don't stop." Looking into his eyes, she saw the hesitancy creeping back. "Ever," she said firmly.

"Sara." Her name came out in barely a whisper, and he leaned his forehead against hers. "What if…"

"What if what?" she challenged him. "What if we wake up tomorrow and this is awkward as hell? What if I'm not twenty six anymore and you have a little more grey hair than you did when we met? What if what, Grissom?" Tired, she buried her face in his shoulder for a moment.

"Do you – " _love me?_ she wanted to ask, but didn't. Partly because she wasn't ready to hear it, partly because she knew he wasn't ready to say it, but mostly because deep inside her, she knew that neither of them would be here if they didn't love each other beyond any words. " – want me?" she asked instead, because wanting was easy...or at least easi_er_.

His arms tightened around her, and his kiss was warm on her temple. "Yes," he said roughly, after a moment of silence. The sigh he gave was barely audible, but she heard how much the admission cost him. "Yes, I want you."

Sara pressed her lips to the pulse in his throat, feeling it quicken beneath his skin. Raising her head, she met his eyes. "And I want you. So much."

She tasted like the wine he'd brought for dinner and the chocolate cake they'd had for dessert, and he never wanted to stop kissing her.

Suddenly she pulled away from him, and backed up a few steps. He stayed standing where he was, confused. Taking his hand, she stepped back again, pulling him with her.

Her smile was wicked, and her eyes were soft. "Come to bed, Grissom."

FIN


	4. First Dreams

"Hey." Sara stuck her head into the bathroom, raising her voice slightly over the noise of the shower. "I'm going to head home. I'll see you at work."

For a minute, there was nothing but the sound of the water, and she wondered if he'd heard her.

"Stay," he said finally.

She was confused. "What?"

"Stay," he repeated. "Here. For the day. To sleep," he clarified. "You keep an extra set of clothes in your car, right?"

X-ray vision would have been useful as she tried to stare through the navy blue shower curtain. They'd fallen asleep together after sex – and once on the couch watching tv when they were both so tired they never even finished their breakfast – but only for an hour or two. They always went back to their own apartments for most of the day. They both liked their own space…and she'd have bet everything she owned that of the two of them, he wouldn't have been the one to change the status quo.

"You really want me to stay?" she asked, trying hard not to grin.

After a short pause:

"Yes," he said. "I really do." Even without x-ray vision, she could picture his expression, carefully unreadable except for the hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth.

Her own smile broke through. "Well, then," she said, her voice muffled as she pulled her shirt over her head. "I want to shower before we go to bed." Sara pushed open the curtain without giving him time to process her statement.

"Sar-" His surprised exclamation was cut off with a warm, wet kiss.

* * *

After that, they stayed together two or three nights a week, when they could. They slept sprawled across the bed, rolled to their respective sides, needing their space.

But the first thing they did when they woke up was curl together in the center of the bed.

* * *

He slept more deeply than she'd expected. He barely stirred when she got up to go to the bathroom, or to the kitchen for water.

He even slept through the first couple of nightmares. Sara woke up gasping, shaking, and crept out of bed, trying not to wake him. Sitting on the couch, she would take slow, careful breaths until the trembling slowed. When she was back in control, she slid quietly back into bed.

The second time, he rolled over when the mattress shifted, reaching out and draping an arm loosely across her waist, but he didn't wake up.

It was her problem, she told herself. It only happened after a really stressful case, or when she'd been working too hard. He didn't need to know. He didn't need to see her like that.

The third time, she wasn't so lucky.

"Sara!" She knew she'd been hearing his voice for a minute or two, but couldn't figure out how it had woven into her dream. All she knew right then was that someone was gripping her arm, tight, and that was _not_ okay.

Sara shoved back at him, hard, and fled to the chair in the corner of her room, nearly tripping herself as her feet tangled in the sheets. Grissom followed, reaching out a hand to soothe her. She jerked away.

"Don't touch me!" Her voice was tense and desperate, and she had drawn her knees up to her chest and was pressed back in her chair.

She saw – the tiny part of her brain that was still thinking rationally saw – the split second of hurt in his eyes, and she knew he'd leave. Very few men had lasted through even one of her nightmares.

But he didn't leave.

He sat back on the corner of the bed, watching her closely. As her breathing slowed, he carefully reached out again, barely touching her arm. When she flinched, he pulled his hand back, but he still didn't leave. He tried again a moment later, and this time she let him touch her.

Grissom had been sleeping like the dead. They'd both worked doubles two days in a row and had fallen asleep in Sara's bed the second they'd hit the sheets. It was nearly five hours later that he'd half woken, his back killing him from being in the exact same position that long. He shifted, reaching out to pull Sara to him, and got a very sharp elbow in his bicep.

That was when he'd woken up, and seen her shaking and half-sobbing, still asleep and obviously in the throes of a nightmare. He'd tried to wake her up, first saying her name softly and then shaking her arm. It was then that she'd run from him. He'd seen Sara in several horrifying situations, but he'd never seen her look as terrified as she did in that moment.

"Sara…" His voice was low and gentle. "It's okay, honey. It's all right." Slowly, carefully he drew her out of the chair and over to the bed, pausing whenever she resisted, waiting, patient. "Lie back down…it's okay." He continued to make soothing noises, helping her lie back down, pulling the covers up to her shoulders. He lay down beside her, rubbing her back, talking to her quietly, soothingly.

Gradually, she calmed, her desperate sobs quieting to silent tears. Grissom left his hand lightly on her back, careful not to hold her too tight. "Shhh…" he murmured. "You're okay. I'm here. I won't let anything happen to you. I won't…" The words caught in his throat. He took a breath, steadied his voice. "I won't let anyone hurt you."

Even the tears stopped eventually. She was quiet so long he thought she'd fallen asleep, until he heard her voice, so soft he had to strain to hear it.

"They never should have gotten married," she said dully, as if the words didn't belong to her. "They were happy for a while, I guess. My brother said they hardly fought at all when he was little, when I was a baby. He remembered my mother pregnant with me, and them being happy and excited when I was born. But she had so many problems that she refused to deal with. Wouldn't get help, wouldn't try therapy or medication. And eventually my dad couldn't deal with it. He couldn't understand why she was so screwed up and it just made him angry and he would lash out and they would just go at it."

She laughed suddenly, the sound hollow. "These dreams – they're so stupid, because I dream that they're coming after me, and it wasn't like that. My brother and I, we were just…there. They hit us, but it was mostly just while they were trying to get at each other. We were like pieces of furniture that got in the way. We kept getting hurt until we learned to stay away. My brother learned first. He left the day he turned eighteen. I was only ten…he said he was sorry he couldn't take me." Shivering suddenly, she reached for his hand, pulling his arms close around her. "I remember their faces. When they were fighting. So angry and so much hate. That's what I dream about."

"Eventually I did learn," she said. "Except…" She held out her left arm and traced a long, thin scar from the side of her elbow halfway to her wrist. It had healed neatly, and her skin was white enough that it barely stood out, but he could still see it when she showed him. "The last time." Sara swallowed hard. "I tried to grab at her, to stop her…It wasn't too deep." She pressed closer to him, until he was holding her so tightly he was afraid she wouldn't be able to breathe.

"It could have been worse," she said, her voice muffled by the pillow. "We see worse. Kids whose parents actually go after them instead of one another, kids who are molested…It could have been worse. They really beat each other up. She had about three broken bones and ten bruises for every one of mine, and the only reason he didn't was because he was bigger, and stronger. I just kept getting in the way…I wanted them to stop fighting."

She shivered again, and he held her even tighter. "You couldn't have stopped them, sweetheart." He felt her curl her fingers around his.

"I know." The words were a whisper.

His thumb gently smoothed back and forth over her knuckles, and his kisses were soothing on her shoulder.

Gradually, her muscles relaxed. Their bodies melted into one another, their breathing slowed…and they slept. And that day, neither of them felt the need for any space.

FIN


	5. First Names

He'd called her "Miss Sidle" at first, a formality he'd often adopted with students. She wasn't technically a student, but she'd hesitated for the tenth time and looked over at him with that intense brown gaze and asked if she could sit with him at dinner – to continue talking with him about his lecture, of course – and his world had shifted just a tiny fraction. So he'd called her Miss Sidle, desperately clinging to his last bit of common sense.

They had lunch together the next day, and after he told her to just skip the "Dr." part and call him Grissom – all his colleagues did – she'd finally rolled her eyes and told him to just call her Sara, already, because she was beginning to feel like she was back in college listening to her eighty-year-old Russian history professor.

"Sara," he said, and enjoyed – or liked – or maybe _loved_ – the way her name tasted and felt and sounded on his lips, "this can't possibly be that different than talking with your professor." He tried not to stare at the curly brown hair she'd let escape from its ponytail, or her smooth, gorgeous skin or the energy that vibrated off her, and he tried to focus on the fact that his knees already ached sometimes when it rained and he was going gray and he couldn't even _remember_ his Russian history professor in college.

Sara rolled her eyes again. "Grissom," she said, and he wondered what "Gil" would sound like in that strange, low, velvet voice. "Trust me. I would _not_ still be here if this were anything like talking to my professor."

Seven years later, she was still there. And eventually, he did find out how her voice sounded when she said his name.

* * *

She thought it was a little strange that he went by his last name, but after a while it rolled off her tongue as easily as any other name…and probably more often than any other name did.

Secretly? She loved it when he called her "Miss Sidle." There was something about the way he said it that was deliciously formal and intimate at the same time, and it sent a hint of a shiver down her spine. It was _nothing_ like talking to her professor, who half the time couldn't have even remembered her name. So she told him to call her Sara, because she'd always found her name vaguely boring and figured there was no possible way he could make it sound like anything special.

She was wrong. Of course. Over the next few years, she found that he could make her name into hundreds of different things – an endearment, a reprimand, a curse, a caress, a warning, a joke – all of them special.

"Sara," he'd murmured into her neck one day as they lay spooned together in her bed, half asleep. "Means princess."

She'd grown used to his non sequiturs. She snorted. "I'm nobody's princess, Grissom," she informed him.

Grissom laughed quietly. "Maybe not," he said. "Means 'lady', too, though," he mumbled. "And you _are_ my lady." He'd kissed her ear as he drifted off.

There was something about the way he said that, "my lady," that conjured up images of chivalry and courtly behavior and devotion and love and all sorts of things that didn't seem so silly coming from him, and she found that really, she didn't mind that interpretation of her name at all.

* * *

"Gris?" she called out from the sink, where she was loading the dishwasher.

"Sara, do you find it odd that we've known each other for more than eight years, have been seeing one another for more than a year, and have been sleeping together for almost ten months and you still call me by my last name?"

Characteristically, he delivered this totally out of the blue question in a perfectly normal tone of voice, without looking up from the book he was reading.

Stalled in the act of putting the last plate in the dishwasher, Sara stared at him for a second. "…I hadn't actually thought about it," she said finally, "but I do find it odd that you can reel off those lengths of time at the drop of a hat and still can't manage to get our evaluation paperwork in on time." He did look up at that, smiling, and she closed the dishwasher and crossed to where he sat on the couch, plopping down sideways next to him and stretching her legs across his lap. Grissom closed his book and rested it on her bent knees. "Seriously, though, I've never really thought about it," she admitted. "It's what I've always called you. It's what _everybody_ calls you. Even Catherine and Brass call you Grissom half the time, and they've known you longer than I have." She frowned. "It just _sounds_ funny."

Grissom put on a mock offended look. "You find my name amusing?"

Sara laughed. "Not funny ha-ha, just funny weird. Like I'm talking to somebody other than you, almost." She tilted her head and studied him. He was still smiling a bit, but there was something in his eyes… "You really want me to stop calling you Grissom," she said, brushing her fingers over his cheek.

He took her hand in his and kissed her palm. "I want you to call me whatever you want to call me," he told her. "But, in the interest of you having all the data, I would like you to know that I've wondered for eight years what you saying my name would sound like."

She couldn't help but smile at that. "Well, then." Leaning in closer to him, she touched her lips to his, ever-so-lightly. "_Gilbert_."

He groaned, and kissed her back. "Not Gilbert. That version of my name will always, _always_ be attached to the memory of my mother discovering me dissecting a cat in her garden shed. She didn't speak out loud very often, but when she did, I listened."

Laughing, she pretended to consider. "I don't know, I kind of like it. Gilbert." She kissed him again, tugging on his shirt until she fell back on the couch with him on top of her. "I think it might suit you."

His response was a glare. "Sara Sidle," he muttered, brushing her hair off her face so that he could kiss her temple, "I swear…"

"Gil," she said softly, stopping him in his tracks.

"Yes, Sara?" His eyes were intent on hers.

"The way I say your name. Gil." The corner of her mouth quirked up. "Is it like you imagined?"

Gil smiled and slowly, lovingly kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheek, the spot on her neck that always made her knees go weak…

"So much better," he murmured, and kissed her lips.


End file.
